


You've Got a Funny Way of Making Friends

by ellbie



Series: Drinking Buddies [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anathema is single, Crowley and Anathema Device are Friends (Good Omens), Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-11-28 00:00:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20957090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellbie/pseuds/ellbie
Summary: Anathema swirled her drink in her glass. “Then what?”“Er, then… I don’t know. I didn’t see him again until the Great Flood.”“Well, when did you start, y’know…” Anathema waggled her eyebrows.Crowley flustered.“Mind your own business, witch.”“Hey, you’re the one that agreed to talk to me about all this stuff. You can’t be mad that I’m asking questions.”





	1. Chapter 1

The small bell over the door to Aziraphale’s bookshop sang out with a high pitched jingle, signaling Anathema’s entrance. 

“Hello, dear girl!” Aziraphale greeted her with a warm smile as she approached the counter with her bright, heavy skirt whirling around her. “You’re a bit early. Crowley hasn’t arrived yet, but you’re more than welcome to make yourself comfortable in the back room. Could I make you some tea or coffee?”

“That’s alright,” she said. “I think he actually wanted to go to a pub today. I just told him I’d meet him here so he could give me a lift.”

“Fair enough,” the angel said with a wink. “Feel free to browse around in the meantime. I know it’s been a few weeks since you were last here for one of your little talks.”

Anathema laughed as she weaved slowly around the stacks of books. 

“As if you’d sell me anything anyway.”

Aziraphale’s hand fluttered to his chest as if he were offended. “_Certain _ friends are more than welcome to peruse the books with the intention of buying.” He thought for a moment and with a twinge of worry, added, “I suppose it would depend on _ what _you wished to buy…”

The bell jingled again as the door slammed open with quite a bit more force than before.

“Let’s go, Book Girl! I left the Bentley running,” an impatient demon called from the entryway.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale chided, “are you sure you wouldn’t rather just stay here? If you’d prefer to have something to drink while the two of you chat, you’re more than welcome to the wine I have in the back.”

Crowley was leaning with his back on the door frame, one foot propping the door open, and his hips jutting out just suggestively enough that a few passersby blushed at the sight of him.

“Nah, angel. I haven’t been to the Enterprise in a bit. Change of scenery’ll be nice.”

Anathema marched to the front of the store to greet Crowley.

“Bye, Aziraphale!” she said with a wave, and the pair walked out into the chilly overcast toward the gleaming, vintage car.

Anathema had only been in the Bentley a handful of times, and, unbeknownst to her, all those were times when Aziraphale had commanded Crowley to drive responsibly. She’d never personally experienced the way Crowley preferred to drive: gunning it down narrow, busy streets and zipping and weaving in and around traffic and pedestrians. 

Her face had drained to a sickly pale as she white-knuckled the armrest.

“How far is this pub?” she squeaked breathlessly after about 30 seconds into the trip.

Crowley smirked when he noticed her eyes were still clamped shut after he’d swerved a little too close to a family that was about to cross the street. 

“I’ll have us there in 5.”

With a thought, the volume knob on the Blaupunkt cranked higher.

Crowley jerked the wheel around a tight bend and sent the back tires spinning out. An oncoming driver, finding them suddenly on the wrong side of the street, laid on the horn and braced for impact before rubber bit back into the road and rocketed the Bentley forward again. All the while, Freddie Mercury belted out a song.

_ I'm burnin' through the sky, yeah _

_ Two hundred degrees _

_ That's why they call me Mister Fahrenheit _

_ I'm traveling at the speed of light _

_ I wanna make a supersonic woman of you _

Anathema was too busy screaming at him to slow down to get the joke.

* * *

Whether Anathema experienced any _ emotional _ trauma during the drive was not a concern of Crowley’s, so neither was it a concern for the Bentley. The car did of course guarantee that she was not in any way _ physically _ injured when, five minutes later, they skidded to a stop in what was definitely _ not _ a parking spot just outside The Enterprise Pub.

Crowley popped out of the car and walked around to Anathema’s side. 

“Coming, Book Girl?”

He tried to open the door for her, but found that her hands, which had scrabbled for purchase anywhere they could find it, were clamped firmly on the handle.

“Uh, Anathema..?”

She blinked her wide eyes and slowly turned her pale face to stare at him through the window. 

“WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?” Her scream was muffled by the still-closed door, but a few people on the sidewalk turned to watch the interaction.

“A shortcut,” he replied dryly as he eased the door open and reached out to prevent Anathema’s wobbly legs from sending her spilling into the sidewalk.

“Who the _ Hell _ even gave you a license?” she asked angrily, fingers viced to his forearm for support.

“A what?”

After a brief argument about whether or not Crowley could actually leave the Bentley right in front of the pub (_ “I already told you, parking spots are things _ humans _ have to worry about.”), _Anathema found herself following the demon to a table close to the front of the establishment. 

It was still early in the day, so it was relatively empty inside. The bartender gave them a nod. 

Crowley lifted his hand, barely returning a wave.

“Usual. Two glasses.”

Anathema settled in a seat across from him and smiled politely when the bartender set two tumblers in front of them.

Then he _ thunk_ed a full bottle of Talisker Single Malt Whisky onto the table.

“Christ, Crowley…” she muttered through clenched teeth.

“_Language _, Anathema,” Crowley admonished sarcastically as he twisted the bottle open and poured them each a glass.

“And a water too, please,” she called weakly after the bartender as she turned a wary eye to the heavy pour.

“So!” Crowley said setting his glass down after taking a gulp. “Where’d we leave off?”

Anathema pulled a small notebook and a pen out of her bag and flipped through the pages.

“Let’s see...“ She scanned her messy writing. “Last time I’d pointed out that in pretty much every story you’ve told me, you were with Aziraphale. Then I asked you how you met, and you got all weird and mentioned something about your plants and ran off.”

She looked up from the notebook and smiled.

Crowley raised an eyebrow.

“Why are you writing all of this down, anyway?”

“Don’t change the subject. When did you first meet? What was Aziraphale like back then?”

“You’ve already heard about Eden,” he said, languidly sipping his drink.

They stopped talking for a moment as the bartender returned with two glasses of water. Anathema waited until he walked out of earshot before continuing.

“So that was the first time, then? You never bumped into each other before..?”

Crowley arched his brow higher and pursed his lips.

Anathema’s hand flew to her mouth.

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”

“S’fine.”

She knew he didn’t like talking about his life before Earth, but she was still getting used to the idea that there really wasn’t much of an Earth before Crowley’s time in the Garden roughly 6000 years earlier.

She awkwardly took a drink, hoping she didn’t just prematurely end their current rendezvous with the misstep.

“I was actually a snake back then,” Crowley carried on, unbothered. “Aziraphale looked exactly like he does now. ‘Cept different clothes I guess.”

“Why were you a snake?”

Crowley shrugged. “At any rate, Aziraphale was miserable at his job. He was supposed to be guarding. Had a big flaming sword and everything. There was a second where I was nervous he’d actually try to stop me. It’s not like they sent _ me _ up with any weapons or anything.” The demon sipped his drink and smiled fondly. “I think he was too distracted by the scenery for that, though. He loved all the flowers and the animals.”

When he noticed her jotting down notes, he clammed up. 

She looked up at him expectantly. “And..?”

“And what? I tempted Eve, she and Adam got booted from the Garden, and now all of their descendants are condemned to short lives full of misery and pain. You know the story.”

“Yes, but I meant ‘And what happened next with Aziraphale?’”

Crowley rolled his eyes. 

“He was a bit distraught after The Almighty banished the humans from the Garden. S’pose I felt a little bad for ‘im. Or I was just bored. My job was over pretty quickly because, like I said, he was shit at guarding, and I didn’t have much else going on. So, I don’t know, I just slithered on over to where he was moping and figured I’d break the ice.”

He grinned.

“I said to him, ‘That went down like a lead balloon.’ I was pretty proud that I was the first person to ever say that on Earth. He didn’t get it.”

Anathema’s eyes crinkled with a smile.

“I noticed right away he didn’t have that ridiculous sword with him anymore, so I asked where it’d gotten off to.” Crowley leaned toward her conspiratorially. “You know what he told me?”

Anathema shook her head.

“He told me he _ gave it away.” _ Behind his sunglasses, Crowley’s eyes were huge with merriment and a little lingering disbelief. 

Anathema guffawed. “Who’d he give it away to?”

“The humans, of course! He was worried they’d get eaten. Or freeze. Or both, I s’pose. He’s always cared about you humans so much.”

He chuckled. 

“Anyway, I just knew, right then…”

Crowley trailed off. He cleared his throat uncomfortably.

“Knew what?” Anathema needled.

The demon shrugged again. “That he was different, I guess. I mean, you’ve seen some of the others.”

“The other angels?”

Crowley nodded.

“Are they all dicks like Gabriel?”

Crowley smiled. He _ knew _ there was a reason he liked spending time with the witch.

“Pretty much.”

Anathema swirled her drink in her glass. “Then what?”

“Er, then… I don’t know. I didn’t see him again until the Great Flood.”

“Well, when did you start, y’know…” Anathema waggled her eyebrows.

Crowley flustered. 

“Mind your own business, witch.”

He attempted to refill their glasses to distract from his reddening face, but Anathema held a hand over the top of hers.

“If I tried to keep pace with a demon, you’d have to roll me out of here on a stretcher.”

“Doesn’t seem like the worst outcome,” Crowley muttered.

“Be nice.”

The demon glowered at her.

“Hey, you’re the one that agreed to talk to me about all this stuff. You can’t be mad that I’m asking questions.”

“Yeah, but you’re getting a little personal.”

“Alright." Anathema clicked her pen shut, closed the notebook, and took a big swig of Scotch. "Just you and me. Girl talk.”

Crowley looked at her like she suddenly had sprouted several extra heads.

“I slept with Newt practically 15 minutes after meeting him because Agnes prophesied I would.”

Crowley choked most of his drink out onto the table, and Anathema cackled.

“Bet you don’t have a story more embarrassing than that,” she taunted, smiling at him deviously.

Rolling his eyes, he went to top them off again, and Anathema didn't stop him.

His lips curled back, revealing a sharp, white smile.

“Did I ever tell you why I was in Rome in 41 AD?”


	2. Chapter 2

Anathema had wondered why Crowley suggested a pub for this meeting. In fact, she was surprised he even offered to meet her again at all after what happened the last time.

A few months after Armageddon was averted, her mother had begun calling to ask about when she thought she might return to America. Anathema always talked around the question, even though it was evident that she wasn’t at home in England. She’d broken up with Newt, and even if she wanted to, she didn’t have much reason to socialize with the residents of Tadfield. Most of them tended to avoid her after she'd interrogated them about the whereabouts of "the Great Beast" anyway. Adam and his gang were pretty much the only people from the village she was still friendly with, but she didn’t exactly consider a bunch of 11-year-olds to be the kind of engaging social company that she felt was missing in her life. 

Once the Earth had been granted a reprieve, Jasmine Cottage began to feel like a personal limbo. She couldn’t return to her old life, and the map of her path forward had been burned away the day she’d put Agnes’s second manuscript into the fire. 

But even though most of her memories of the Saturday the World Was Supposed to End had fuzzied in her mind by the time she’d woken up the following Sunday, she did still remember the demon that had hit her with his car and the angel that had stolen her book. In fact, she'd exchanged numbers with Aziraphale before they parted ways that day at the airbase. He'd offered to try repair the burnt copy of _The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter_.

In a moment of desperation, she'd called him to catch up.

Aziraphale, feeling sorry for her when she'd told him about the breakup, had sent her a hand-written letter with the bookshop’s address, phone number, Crowley’s cell phone number, and the number to the landline in Crowley’s flat. He’d also written that they’d love to see her the next time she was in London.

Of course, Aziraphale had done all that without consulting the demon first, which was immediately apparent to Anathema the first time she awkwardly sat with the two of them sipping tea in the bookshop. Crowley’s aura looked as soured as his face, but Aziraphale ignored him and doted on the witch, asking how she was doing, if she wanted any biscuits, if she was still saying at Jasmine Cottage, if she’d seen Adam and his friends lately.

Something about Aziraphale made her feel like she was exactly where she needed to be, so she’d started to come to visit more regularly. She’d been fascinated by his bookshop, and chuckled behind the shelves any time she overheard him convincing a customer to leave empty-handed.

After a handful of visits, he’d offered to let her stay the night (“_It’s far too late for you to get back to the train station, my dear. I can make up the bedroom for you in a jiff. No, no, really! I quite literally do _not_ need to sleep. I insist! _”), and she’d politely ignored the waves of annoyance rolling off of the demon.

“Besides,” Aziraphale had continued. “Crowley’s always said he likes your… Oh, what was it?” Aziraphale put his finger to his chin, thinking. “Moxie! Crowley, dear, you always said, ‘That American’s got moxie!'” 

Aziraphale chuckled, seemingly pleased with himself, and walked to get a bottle of wine for the group.

Anathema tried to stifle a laugh as Crowley did a spit take with his coffee.

After a few glasses of wine, Crowley had warmed up to the witch’s company. After a few bottles, he’d become the lead actor in his own play, with Anathema as his rapt audience of one and Aziraphale as his supporting cast.

“N-n-no, my dear, he’s got it all wro… all wrun… He’s lying.” Aziraphale hiccupped. “I didn’t get captured _just_ ‘cause I wanted crepes. I wanted brioche, too. S’perfectly good reason to go to Paris,” the angel slurred.

“Durin’ a _revolution_?! Coulda at least dressed like a normal person, ‘n’ya wouldn’t have been up next in line for the… eh, whatchyacallit? The head-cutty-machine.”

Crowley made a slicing motion with his hand.

“Guillotine!” Aziraphale cried out proudly.

The demon whirled around so forcefully to face Anathema he nearly fell out of his seat. 

“So this bloody idiot,” he pointed wildly in a direction that Aziraphale was not sitting in, “can’t use any miracles ‘cause _Gabriel,_ the blessed prick, sent ‘im a letter. Or somethin'. Anyway, so _who’s_ gotta save ‘im?” Crowley let his arms flail out wide. “_ME, _s’who!”

Anathema had doubled over from laughter as she wiped tears from her face and tried desperately not to spill red wine on the floor. It was the first time she remembered being that happy in a while.

From then on, Crowley didn’t seem to mind as much when she traveled in from Tadfield to visit. Some of the days, they’d sit just the two of them in the back room, sipping Azirapahle’s champagne as the angel worked in the shop. Aziraphale would look up and smile when he heard the muffled giggles float over from around the corner before returning his attention to whatever book he was reading at the time.

As much as Anathema felt safe and at home with Aziraphale (and she really did love him dearly), something about the time she spent with Crowley made her feel so much less _ alone. _

"My whole, entire life was dictated to me by Agnes," she told him one night when they were by themselves. "Then I had this_ one_ chance to be free, and... and it wasn't what I thought it was going to be."

Her face had twisted with guilt.

"All my life, I had her voice in my head, guiding me. And I turned my back on her. The worst part is, she probably knew the whole time that I would do it."

Large, bright tears clung for a moment to her lashes before they spilled over, sending shining veins of water down her cheeks. Crowley had folded her hand in his, and looked into her eyes silently for a long time. His voice was gentle when he finally spoke.

"Just because you chose this path, doesn't mean you can't choose to be happy now that you’re on it."

Her body heaved with great, hiccupping sobs as she’d fallen into his arms, staining his coat with tears and runny makeup, wailing about Newt and how she didn’t know if she’d made the right decision, or if she even had the free will to make a decision on her own at all.

Crowley just held her until she cried herself out, awkwardly patting her back and not saying a word because there weren’t anymore to say.

* * *

After a while, she realized that if she wanted to keep being drinking buddies with Crowley, she was going to need to start writing things down.

“Wait… wait… I thought _you_ were the one performing the miracles in Edinburgh. With the horse?”

She massaged at the wine headache that was starting in her temples.

“Keep up, Book Girl!” Crowley slurred into his glass. “I miracled the _coin flip_. Wasn’t goin’ to Scotland if I didn’t hafta.”

“What was that, dear boy?” Aziraphale asked as he walked into the back room to join them after closing up the shop.

“‘Nothin’, angel.” 

Anathema snorted, and Crowley glared at her. 

“Just tellin’ the young witch about how much I _love_ when you drag me to see Shakespeare’s gloomy plays.”

So she’d taken to jotting down some notes in a little notebook. Crowley never seemed to mind, and after a while she had a good number of pages to flip through on her train rides back to Tadfield. Sometimes she’d use her phone to look up some of the names and dates, wondering if she’d ever catch either of them in a lie, but they were always spot on.

One evening, after a few hours of lounging about, reading, and sipping drinks, Aziraphale had excused himself to get more tea. Anathema looked up from the book she was reading (an ancient text on witchcraft that Aziraphale thought she’d enjoy) and saw Crowley staring after him, smiling fondly. He’d gotten tipsy enough that his sunglasses were now tucked in his pocket, and his golden eyes gleamed in the waning, late-afternoon sunlight.

“How’d you two meet?”

“Hmm?” His head snapped around as if startled.

“You and Aziraphale. You’ve been on Earth since the Beginning, and in practically every story you tell, he’s there. It’s like you’re married or something,” she laughed. 

Crowley didn’t.

“So how’d you meet? Oh! I should definitely write this down so I don’t get it mixed up.”

She reached toward her bag where her notebook was tucked away.

“Er… um…” 

He stood up from the couch and fumbled to get his sunglasses back on. 

“Ngh.”

“Huh?”

“Well, ‘s’been fun, Book Girl, but I’ve gotta go-”

“Already?”

“- yell at my plants”

“What? Wait… what?”

And with a snap of his fingers, Crowley was gone.

Anathema blinked at the empty space where the demon had vanished. Her mouth hung open slightly as she leaned back in her seat and wondered if she wasn’t supposed to tell Aziraphale what just happened.


	3. Chapter 3

After they’d made their way through most of the bottle of Scotch and generally behaved loudly and drunkenly enough that any responsible bartender would’ve cut them off and helped them hail a cab, she had to assume there was some demonic intervention afoot to prevent the other patrons from paying them any mind. No one had even batted an eye when and Crowley yelled, “Oi! Your job was the worst idea Hell ever had, and I want you to spend the rest of your miserable life wondering if that's a good or a bad thing!" at the parking enforcement officer that had stopped to tut at the Bentley.

Crowley waved for another bottle. 

“Oh, no, no no. I’ve had mooore thanna‘nough,” she slurred.

“You, maybe. But I’ve been building up a tolerance since…” He furrowed his brow. “You remember when they first invented alcohol?”

She shook her head.

“Well I do, and you’re _welcome._”

He poured himself another glass.

“Actually, might’ve been Aziraphale's lot that had a hand in that. M’brain’s a bit fuzzy. Anyway, what happened next? With your roommate?”

“Oh! Right, so: She only made out with me to make her ex-boyfriend jealous. I cried for a month.”

“Oof.”

“Right? I was basically planning the rest of our lives together and _bam!_” Anathema clapped her hands together for effect. “Reality check. And it was only one kiss, so, y’know, I was bein’ dumb.” 

She thought for a moment.

“Actually, m’not dumb! I mean, lookit me!” She held her arms out. “I’ma catch!” 

She shook her head, grinning in embarrassment. “Ok, your turn to tell me a sad one.”

“Satan, are all humans this bleak? Or just witches?”

“I believe th’saying is ‘misery loves compamy’... compn… whatever.”

Crowley’s face turned serious. “You’re not miserable, Anathema. You’re making it along just fine on your own.”

For a moment, Anathema was taken aback by his kind words. Then she realized with a swelling sense of pride that she actually believed them.

She grinned again. “Sad one. Go.”

“Fine,” Crowley sighed.

He thought for a moment and took a long sip of his drink.

“Alright, it was the 1800s. I made the mistake of asking someone for something very, very dangerous…”

“Ok, you’ll need to be a lil’ more specific.”

He let out a tired groan.

“It was 1862. St. James’s Park. Think it was a Tuesday. Around 3 in the afternoon? I remember it was a bit chilly. There were...” He counted on his fingers. “...Somewhere between 5-7 ducks swimming in the lake.”

Her index finger stabbed through the air and pointed accusingly at his face.

“Don’ be an ass,” she scolded, swaying drunkenly in her seat.

“Anyway,” he continued, “Aziraphale and I had reached the Arrangement almost 900 years prior.”

Anathema smiled at the thought of Crowley and Aziraphale doing small favors and performing miracles and temptations for each other throughout history.

“I was starting to get a bit nervous that Hell might catch on. I mean, if that happened, it would’ve ended badly.” He chewed the inside of his cheek. “For both of us.”

Anathema slowly reached over to open her notebook, but Crowley didn’t notice.

“I wanted insurance. Holy Water. In case anyone came looking for me.”

The witch’s eyes slowly grew to shining, bright-brown saucers.

“_Not _for that. Why does everyone think- Nevermind. Anyway, I wanted protection. Hell wasn’t going to send anyone after me that wouldn’t be reduced to a screaming puddle if they touched a drop of Holy Water. I figured by keeping myself safe, I could keep Aziraphale safe too.

“So I asked for Holy Water, and you know what he told me?”

“Wait, who’s ‘he’? Aziraphale?”

Crowley pressed on. “He asked me if I knew how much trouble he’d be in if Heaven found out he’d been _fraternizing_ with the enemy. His words. After almost _6000 years_, he didn’t want to be caught _fraternizing_ with me.”

Anathema frowned.

“Then I got angry, and he stormed off. And I didn’t see him again for over half a century.”

“_Ouch._”

“You’re tellin’ me. Felt like a bloody idiot. I thought he knew me better than that, y’know?”

Anathema nodded earnestly. 

Crowley glanced down at his hands.

“Thought I was more important to him than… that.”

Crowley looked back up at her.

“Oooh, no, Book Girl. No crying. I swear to…”

Anathema sniffled and dabbed the edges of her eyes with a napkin.

“Did you ever talk to him about it?”

Crowley shook his head.

“Even though it still upsets you?”

The demon shrugged. “Anathema, if I talked to him about all the things he’s ever done to upset me, we never would’ve had time to avert the blessed Apocalypse.”

He paused for a moment, ruminating.

“Do you know why I brought you here?”

Anathema shook her head.

“The day Armageddon was supposed to begin, I’d been trying to get him to run away with me. I knew there wasn’t a chance in Heaven or Hell that we were going to get out of that mess alive. Not both of us, at least. But he couldn’t bear to abandon Earth. He wanted _so desperately_ to save it, and all I wanted…”

Crowley’s voice caught for a moment, and he took another drink of Scotch.

“All I wanted was to save him. To save us.”

Anathema’s chin was perched on her hand, and she leaned in close as Crowley continued.

“We’d gotten in a fight over it. Then two goons from Hell _did_ come looking for me. I had the Holy Water at that point, so I was able to get away from them, but afterwards the only place I could think to go was the bookshop. It was a few hours from the Apocalypse starting at that point, and I pulled up to his street in the Bentley and the whole building… Aziraphale’s whole little world…” 

Crowley took a deep breath. 

His eyes were desperate with sadness behind his sunglasses. 

“It was burning, Anathema.”

The witch sucked in a breath as her hand flew to her mouth.

“The whole shop, up in flames. So I run in, and I can’t find the angel anywhere. I mean, normally we can sense each other, but this time… he was just…” Crowley waved his hand through the air. “Gone.”

He looked down when he felt his eyes watering.

“I thought they’d killed him.”

Tears were falling silently down Anathema’s face when he met her gaze again.

“So I come here. I get absolutely piss drunk, and I’m in the middle of wallowing and feeling sorry for myself. And you know what happened?”

Anathema shook her head, eyes wide, mouth hanging slightly open.

“He appeared. Out of thin air. Right where you’re sitting.”

Anathema let out an astonished little gasp as she looked down at her seat and then back at the demon.

“He’d been discorporated, so he wasn’t _really_ there, but I could see him and talk to him. He couldn’t see me, but he came back all the way from Heaven, without a body, just to find me,” Crowley paused to sip his drink, “and brag about how he was clever enough to figure out where the Antichrist was.”

A laugh spilled out of Anathema as the tension released its grip on her chest. 

“Oh, come on. He did not.”

“Did too. He was _sooo _pleased with himself.”

She chuckled again, and Crowley continued.

“I can’t even tell you how happy I was to see him. It was… it was a bloody miracle, is what it was.” Crowley smiled at the memory. “I told him he was my best friend. Probably a good thing he couldn’t see me. I was a blubbering mess.”

“And the rest is history, I assume?” Anathema was smiling warmly.

Crowley blushed.

“Pretty much, I guess.”

After a moment of quiet, he added, “Right, now you owe me _two_ stories. I want funny ones.”

* * *

Slowly, the grey, chilly day grew colder and darker, and a surprise dusting of snow began to fall. Anathema had been way too inebriated to deal with the train back to Tadfield, so Crowley had offered to drive her. He’d agreed not to drive like a maniac if she’d promised not to vomit in his car. A parking ticket vanished in a plume of smoke and sparks at the snap of Crowley’s fingers, and then they were off: the Bentley sailing through the night with bright, white moon carving its way up the black sky behind them. Before long, Anathema rested her head against the window and let her eyes droop shut. 

She fell asleep to the hum of the engine with her hand clutching her little notebook.


	4. Chapter 4

When Anathema woke up the next day, it was entirely too early and entirely too bright. She winced as she brought her fingertips to her throbbing temples. Moaning in pain, she cursed Crowley’s stupid name. 

If Heaven was responsible for alcohol, then demons were responsible for hangovers. 

She took a few sips of water and swallowed a couple tabs of Aspirin. After confirming they weren’t going to come right back up with the rest of the contents of her stomach, she fell back into a restless sleep.

It was about another hour before she finally dragged herself out of bed. She slouched into the kitchen and sat at the table with her head in her hands. Then she reached for her laptop and opened her email. She took a breath and began typing.

After a few tries of furiously deleting, re-typing, sighing, closing her laptop, opening her laptop again, staring wistfully out the window, and re-typing once more, she finally settled on: 

_Newt,_

_I just wanted to reach out and see how you were doing. If you’re still upset with me, that’s OK. You were dragged into this whirlwind of my life through no real fault of your own, and I left you about as unceremoniously as I found you. I’m sorry I never gave you the chance to talk with me about it after._

_I do hope you’re well, and even though it’s too soon for me to offer a lame “let’s still be friends,” I figured I could at least extend the olive branch. If you even want it. _

_Anathema_

She let out a sad sigh and pressed ‘Send’ before she could change her mind. Then she grabbed her phone and started typing out a text to Crowley.

_Thanks for the ride home yesterday. _

She frowned for a moment.

_And for the drinks. _

After one more pause,

_And the chat. _

She watched the little typing-indicator dots from Crowley’s end of the conversation flash. When her phone _ding_ed, she read:

_Anytime, witch. Let us know when you plan to actually move to London. I could do without seeing Tadfield for the next 6000 years._

She smiled, then watched patiently as the dots appeared again.

_BTW, check your email. _

She blanched and scrambled to unlock her laptop. 

_Oh God, what’d he do?, _she thought, hurrying to open her email client.

When it finally loaded, she didn’t have a new message from Newt, which was a relief. She didn’t want Crowley interfering with that conversation at all. 

There was a _ping,_ and an unread message popped into her inbox from an address she didn’t recognize. She opened it warily. 

_Hey Anathema, _

_I hope this isn’t weird to be writing you out of the blue like this. I know it’s been a few years, but for whatever reason, I was just thinking about when we were roommates and how awful I was to you. I still feel really shitty about the whole thing._

_If you don’t want to talk or anything, that’s totally fine. I get it. It’s just that I saw that you’d moved to England, and I was actually planning a little solo trip out to London for a few weeks next month. Not sure if you’d be close by or not, but if you were and wanted to meet up, I’d love to treat you to lunch or a drink as a way of saying “sorry I was such a bitch.” _

_Let me know! I’d really love to see you._

_Ashley_

“Holy. Shit.”

Anathema grabbed her phone and started typing frantically.

_OMG what did you do????_

She jiggled her leg nervously as she waited for a response.

_Demonic intervention, obviously. And I’m pretty sure the proper response is ‘thank you’ _

She sighed.

_This is so awkward. What do I even say? _

The dots appeared again, then vanished as they were replaced by text.

_Tell her you know a lovely little pub in London where your demon friend can get the bartender to give you a discount. _

More dots flashed.

_Also, ask her if she’s still single. Before you go to all the trouble._

Anathema groaned and buried her face in her hands. When her phone _ding_ed again, she peaked out from behind her palms to read the message.

_Aziraphale told me to ask you if that sushi place sounds good for dinner next weekend_ 👼🍣

Despite a serious effort to prevent it, her tortured expression twisted into a smile.

_Only if we walk from the bookshop. I’m never getting in a car with you again. _

Anathema closed her laptop and locked her phone. She was happy to feel that her headache had lessened considerably. She twisted around in her seat to rifle through the bag that she'd slung over the back of the chair the night before. When she found her notebook, she turned back around and spent the rest of the morning lazily flipping through the pages and smiling quietly to herself.


End file.
